The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘Maestro Fabrici,’ he calls back, recognizing the speaker, ‘our august professor of anatomy! Off to do some butchery, are you? Bring me back a good slice of fresh pork.’

  ‘I’ll bring you back a dozen, if you like – but I doubt you’d be able to count them accurately.’

  Galileo raises his cup in a good-natured salute. ‘Tell me, Professor, is the door to your new anatomy theatre locked?’

  ‘Locked? It doesn’t have a door yet. And I intend to take that up with Signor Fassolato of the Arte dei Carpentieri straight after Mass. Why do you wish to know?’

  ‘An assignation, Professor Fabrici,’ Galileo says, picking the first fiction that comes into his head. ‘You must remember those – though, in your case, it would be a very ancient memory.’

  ‘You’re a disgrace to the university, Professor Galileo,’ Fabrici replies with good humour, bringing mutters of agreement from his companions.

  ‘So anyone can just walk in?’

  ‘Holy Mother of God! Don’t tell me you’re inviting an audience to watch you in your rutting? Are you that desperate to raise money?’

  ‘Just wondered. It doesn’t sound very secure.’

  ‘We have a watchman, so you’ll have to bribe him.’ Fabrici gives him a foxy stare. ‘If that’s beyond even your limited resources, I can only suggest you find a convenient wall, like the lecherous rogue you clearly are.’

  The drums have started up again, echoing from the head of the procession somewhere on the way to the Basilica of St Anthony. The professors gather up the hems of their togas and prepare to resume their un-martial shuffling.

  ‘If there should happen to be any sign of…’ Fabrici screws up his face in disgust, ‘fornication… in my anatomy theatre tomorrow morning, Professor Galileo, I shall have stern words with the rector.’

  ‘Why?’ says the mathematician, making a farewell flourish with his free hand as the professors move off. ‘Does the rector use it, too?’

  The blood on Bianca’s dress comes from a glancing slash to her shoulder.

  ‘It’s not deep,’ Nicholas says, after a careful inspection. ‘But it needs binding.’ He unlaces her sleeve, removes his own doublet, rips one sleeve off his linen shirt and tears a makeshift bandage. When he has tied it in place, he turns his attention to Ruben Maas. The priest’s right eye is half-shut, the socket bloodied from where Nicholas’s first blow landed. He is dabbing his mouth with his kerchief to staunch the bleeding from the gash in his lower lip.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Nicholas says, ‘but I had every reason to think you were an assassin. You must see how it looked—’

  The priest nods slowly through the pain. ‘There is no blame, I have brought all this on myself,’ he says miserably. ‘I am a weak man. A man of faith, not of violence. But even I should have had the courage to have acted earlier, in the cathedral at Den Bosch. Then perhaps I could have stopped all this in its tracks.’

  Nicholas stares at him. ‘In the cathedral at Den Bosch? It was you in that chamber? You’re the one I caught a glimpse of as you fled?’

  ‘I had no idea Hella was going to kill the priest, or the Spaniard. It all happened so quickly. But then, ever since Breda she has been like that: one moment calm and placid, the next a raging she-devil. I believe it is because she has Satan inside her heart. He makes her hate herself.’

  ‘Hella?’ Nicholas breathes. ‘She killed them?’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Why was I so blind? She wasn’t screaming in that chamber because of what she’d witnessed. She realized it was too late to run, and the knife was out of reach on the floor. She was screaming to fool me.’ He stoops to retrieve his doublet from the floor and slips it on, leaving the points unlaced. ‘Help me get my wife to the Borgo dei Argentieri,’ he says curtly, his face creased with self-recrimination. ‘I can bathe her wound properly there – and yours. You can explain everything as we go.’

  The fog is so thick now, the night so dark, that they almost miss the bridge. Only the torches burning on the parapet show the way back into the city. Bianca refuses the help of either man. Nicholas clumsily persists.

  ‘I’m not an invalid, Husband. I can walk perfectly well. It’s my shoulder – there’s nothing wrong with my legs.’

  ‘But the child—’

  ‘The child will be fine, Nicholas. I know it. After what Ruben just said, Hella’s curse does not frighten me any more.’ She stares up into the fog, as though it might contain dark creatures floating out of sight. ‘But I fear what she is capable of: the Dutch priest… that Spaniard… poor Matteo Fedele… Bondoni the goldsmith.’

  ‘Were you in the crowd today, when she pushed Bondoni into the path of the horses?’ Nicholas asks Ruben.

  The priest covers his face with his hands. ‘Oh, sweet Saviour, not another one.’

  ‘I think it is time for you to give a full account of yourself, Father Ruben,’ Nicholas says as they hurry across the canal and into the narrow lanes beyond. ‘And your troubled sister.’

  ‘It began after Breda,’ Ruben begins. ‘Until then we were a fortunate family – gifted not in riches, but in our minds. Hella was the cleverest by far. She ate numbers as hungrily as others eat sweetmeats and sugared comfits. Soon she started to believe that she could foretell events because of the patterns she saw in numbers – she thought numbers were the underlying structure of all that she saw around her. But after the Spanish came to Breda, she began to blame herself for not foreseeing the greatest threat of all.

  ‘Afterwards I could not bear to remain in a place with so many terrible memories clinging to it. When Hella took refuge with the Beguines, I went north, into the Protestant territories. I still believed in God, but I knew He could not be a Catholic God. I became a Lutheran priest.’

  ‘How did you come to be in Den Bosch cathedral then?’ Nicholas asks.

  ‘Eventually I gathered the courage to go back to search for Hella. I tracked her down to the city, found her sitting in a doorway like a prophet who’s been cast out by those she would warn. She told me of the painting, and that she was going to plead with Father Vermeiren to remove it. When we entered that little chapel, I thought that’s what she was going to do. Then she drew a knife. It all happened so quickly. Vermeiren was dead before he knew what was happening – before I knew what was happening. When the Spaniard tried to take the blade from her, she struck him across the throat.’

  ‘And then you fled?’

  ‘What could I do? If they’d found out I was a priest from the Protestant states, they would have hanged me. I looked to my own safety – and for a second time I abandoned my sister.’

  Walking in step between the two men, Bianca says, ‘Why did she not kill you, Nicholas?’

  ‘She had dropped the knife before I stepped out into plain view,’ Nicholas answers. ‘As Ruben says, Hella has faster wits than most. She probably realized that by the time she got to it, either I would have overpowered her or the commotion would have brought others running. So she decided to play the innocent victim. She started screaming.’

  ‘Why did you decide to follow us, Father Ruben?’ Bianca asks the priest.

  ‘I thought perhaps I could help my sister find redemption. But at Reims, when I tried to speak to her, she would have none of me. I was not deterred. I would not let myself forsake her again, not like I had after Breda. And to be truthful to you – and God knows it’s time to be truthful to myself – I feared she might kill again.’ He gives a sad, reflective laugh. ‘I thought I could stop her. What a fool I was.’

  Nicholas says, ‘That’s when I saw you first, when you stopped her in the cathedral square. And then again at the hospice of St Bernard’s in the mountains. You could have spoken to us. It would have been better if you had.’

  Father Ruben finds another failing in himself. He adds it to the list with a slow shake of his head. ‘Alas, I am not accomplished at intrigue. Besides, Hella told me I should not trust you.’

  ‘Hardly a fortnight after we saved her life,’ Bianca sa
ys, as though she’s known it all along.

  ‘Why did you run – the day I saw you in that side-street by the Basilica?’ Nicholas asks.

  ‘I told you: I am a coward. That’s what cowards do. They run.’

  Bianca lays a hand on Ruben’s forearm. ‘You are not a coward, Father Ruben. A coward would not have risked his life to seek out his sister in a land dangerous to him. And a coward wouldn’t have done what you did in that storehouse.’ She turns her head to Nicholas. ‘Hella pulled a blade. She would have killed me. As it was, she landed a strike on my shoulder even as I was trying to get away from Ruben – whom I believed at that moment was the true assassin. He stood over me. He told her that if she was determined to take my life, she would have to take his first. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘It took me long enough to find it. When I followed Hella to that same place a few days ago, on the day she murdered that poor young fellow, I fled again – like a frightened child.’

  ‘At least I know now why she’s doing it,’ Nicholas says. ‘Warning us about the dangers of seeking knowledge is no longer enough for her. She’s come to the conclusion it’s better to stop us altogether. If we’re dead, we can’t look behind the curtain. We can’t open the door and risk letting the Devil in.’

  Ahead of them, the two Corio cousins rise up out of the fog, their dice and their wine forgotten. Staring in disbelief at the apparitions emerging from the night, they begin to draw their rapiers. Bianca stays them with a brief call of reassurance. Once inside the house, Nicholas dispatches one of them to fetch a flask of aquavite di vinaccia from the credenza in the parlour. He uses the grape spirit to clean Bianca’s wound and the lacerations that his fury has inflicted on Ruben’s face.

  ‘Where did your sister go?’ he asks, dabbing the spirit-soaked cloth against the priest’s mouth.

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘She walked out into the fog without a word?’

  ‘Not exactly. She said something about an audience?’

  ‘She wants an audience for whoever in the Arte dei Astronomi she intends to kill next?’ Nicholas asks, horrified.

  ‘I heard what she said,’ Bianca chimes in. ‘I’m not quoting her exactly, but it was along the lines of: It is bad enough people opening the door to the Devil’s knowledge without scholars making a theatre of it and inviting an audience.’

  ‘Then I believe I know where she’s gone,’ Nicholas says. The sense of dread that has been with him ever since the Arte dei Astronomi began its march without its leading light has become a hard, cold stone in his stomach. ‘I’m going back to the Palazzo Bo.’

  Bianca rises from her chair.

  ‘No, stay here,’ Nicholas says, sounding harsher than he intended. ‘She has already tried to kill you once. At least here you have the Corio cousins to keep you safe.’

  He turns to Ruben.

  ‘Forgive me for the hurt I did you, Father. Do you feel well enough to come with me? You may be the only man able to avert further tragedy tonight.’

  Ruben tries to smile through the swollen corner of his lip. ‘I’ve come this far,’ he says. ‘Only a true coward would give up now.’

  The streets around the Palazzo Bo are almost empty. The tail of the procession is somewhere off to the south, towards the Basilica of St Anthony, mired in the fringes of the great crowd filling the Piazza del Santo. But Nicholas can still hear the echoing of drums and the occasional roar of public approval.

  By day, the arcades that line the university are teeming with students and scholars, arguing, debating, sometimes even brawling. But tonight they stand empty, like the cloisters of an abandoned monastery. The mist drifts around the arches like a mournful sea lapping at an uninhabited shore. The watchman’s brazier burns unattended. Nicholas calls out, but receives no answer.

  ‘Perhaps he’s slipped away to watch the procession,’ Ruben says as he and Nicholas lift torches from an iron rack bolted to a pillar and light them in the brazier. Nicholas doesn’t answer. His fear is that the watchman has been lured away not by curiosity, but by some clever deceit – or, worse, that he has met the same fate as the Spaniard at Den Bosch, paying with his life for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  On the way from the Borgo dei Argentieri he has had plenty of time for dark images to crowd his mind. Now he understands Bruno’s failure to join the procession. He is certain that Bruno and the mathematician have somehow been lured to this place by Hella Maas. The knowledge fills him with dread. The fact that she is one young woman, alone, does not ease that dread for an instant.

  Torch in hand, the flames casting devilish patterns on the plastered walls, he approaches the empty hole in the night that is the open doorway to the uncompleted anatomy theatre. He senses Ruben hesitate.

  ‘Be careful,’ he warns the priest. ‘This place is full of workmen’s gear and rubbish. I’ve caused you enough hurt already, without you planting your face on the floor or walking into a beam.’

  ‘There is no room left in my heart for any further hurt,’ Ruben says grimly. ‘It is too full of pain for what my sister has done.’

  On either side of the open doorway a flight of wooden stairs curves away around the elliptical body of the auditorium, creating a narrow space between the inner and outer walls. Ahead of him, through the entrance, Nicholas can see the railed enclosure where Professor Fabrici will carry out his dissections when the anatomy theatre is in use. It is not a large space, just long enough to take a cadaver, with enough room for the lecturer to stand between his subject and the first tier of his audience.

  To his horror, he sees the dissection area is not empty. By the torchlight he can make out a figure lying on the platform. He moves cautiously closer, holding up the torch. Suddenly the figure sits up. In Nicholas’s mind, he has just seen a corpse rise from its grave.

  ‘You’ve left the procession, Signor Physician,’ says Galileo, his voice a little slurred. ‘Wise fellow. Who wants to listen to a priest blessing a toy boat when there are taverns still open?’ He jabs a finger in Nicholas’s direction. ‘I was expecting Master Purse,’ he adds as an afterthought. ‘Has he sent you instead? Have you brought the money with you?’

  ‘Money?’ echoes Nicholas, confused.

  ‘Bruno sent me a note to meet him here. He said he had a heavy purse of the doge’s coin to give me.’

  ‘Did you receive this note from his own hand, Professor?’ Nicholas asks.

  ‘No, it was a maid. She looked like one of those Poor Clares, clad in sackcloth and brimming with piety.’

  Nicholas covers his face with his free hand for a moment, as if to stop his thoughts from spinning and fix them in one place.

  ‘From Hella Maas?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t her,’ Galileo says. ‘I’d have recognized her.’

  ‘I fear greatly for Bruno’s life, Professor – and yours,’ Nicholas tells him. ‘I think you should come away from this place, now. There is great danger here.’

  Galileo gets to his feet. He peers at Nicholas in the torchlight, trying to read his face. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘Never more so.’

  ‘What sort of danger?’

  ‘Of murder.’

  ‘You’re still fretting about that, are you? I told you before, no one in this city would bother themselves making an affray upon my life. Apart from dear old Fabrici – and my creditors, of course.’ He frowns at his own reasoning. ‘But then what good would murdering me do them? You can’t get blood out of a stone, and you can’t get a dead man to pay his debts.’

  ‘The one you have to fear is the maid with the clever brain.’

  ‘Signorina Maas?’ Galileo says, astonished.

  ‘It was she who killed Matteo Fedele. Today she murdered the goldsmith, Bondoni. And she would have killed my wife, Bianca, too – had not Ruben here stopped her. I fear you and Bruno are next on her list.’

  Galileo seems to chew the air as he digests what Nicholas has told him. />
  ‘Why?’ he demands. ‘I have done her no harm. What does she want to murder me for?’

  And then, out of the darkness from one of the tiers above, comes a woman’s voice, calling out in a guttural English.

  ‘Tell him, Nicholas. You understand the truth. You tell him why he must die.’

  In the flickering torchlight, three heads move as one. Three pairs of eyes fix on the figure standing, barely visible, behind the wooden balustrade of the third tier. Hella Maas, dressed as plainly as a martyr at the stake, her hands away from her sides to grip the rail, leans out of the darkness as though intending to address an assembled crowd of loyal followers.

  ‘I think we should hear the justification from you, Hella,’ Nicholas answers. ‘Do not seek to make me complicit in your madness.’

  ‘I have to stop them, Nicholas,’ she cries out. ‘The curtain has to be drawn. The door has to be closed. We have let the Devil in too often. If we let him in again, there will be chaos. Judgement Day will be upon us all soon enough. The world must have a little peace before it does. A little rest. How else may we ready ourselves for what is coming?’

  Nicholas jams his torch into the narrow gap between the dissection table and its surrounding rail, then climbs up onto the balustrade of the lower observation tier. He reaches out to steady himself against the edge of the tier above, his head tilted back so that he can look up directly into Hella’s face.

  ‘You are suffering a terrible malady of the soul, Hella. I understand that. But this insanity cannot continue. Come down and let your brother help you.’

  Her head turns towards where Ruben stands with Galileo. ‘So the courage you found in the storehouse hasn’t deserted you yet, little brother,’ she says, a sad smile on her face. ‘You couldn’t help me after Breda, and you cannot help me now.’ She leans further out to look down at Nicholas. ‘Only you can help me,’ she says. ‘You, alone, can see a little of what is in my heart. No one else has that faculty.’ She looks puzzled as – beneath her – his face contorts with rejection. ‘You know I am right, Nicholas. Admit it.’